Andrew Schroeder

After reading about “Status Anxiety” for the last couple of weeks, I have become acutely paranoid about my status. Like a wet chihuahua shivering and seeking shelter, I decided to switch to something a bit more pleasant.  Enter “The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition” by James Howard Kunstler. Engaging and well-written, it is the perfect remedy for someone tired of feeling like they make no money and lack cultural cachet.

The first chapter looks at Haussmann’s renovation of Paris between 1852-70. The legacy of this project reverberates throughout urban history, up to the “cement blocks in a park” planning of Le Corbusier… and maybe a little Ralph Rapson.

I’m drawn to this episode of urban history because of the parallels between Haussmann’s grand transportation plans for Paris and our current administration’s desire to transform movement in the American city. I’m curious if contemporary property laws will be bent and shifted (as they were for Haussmann) to allow for new infrastructure to quickly be built and utilized or if we’re going to have to wait 100+ years for anything to take shape… Or I wonder if the new plans for our cities will just end up a part of the legacy of Le Corbusier’s radiant city…

Kunstler also throws out two tidbits that still hold my attention: 1) Deficit spending and massive credit to improve urban life was first introduced with Haussmann’s projects, and 2) the movement to higher-density, apartment dwellings in early Paris, firmly put in place a modern set of social norms and values.

The chapter concludes with a parallel implied between artists viewing the urban landscape in 1870s Paris and the work of contemporary visual artists. Where Paris’ new urban spaces were deemed a source of genuine inspiration (something new, genuine and marvelous) it seems almost impossible for an artist to look to our current urban forms in this way. I feel there is an undercurrent of unshakable irony present in the images of contemporary urban spaces, strip malls, and housing tracts. (My own images are certainly not immune)

So, I have just come back, full-circle.

My project for this weekend: grab my Mamiya 7, the rest of the film I’ve been hording, and take the the streets of Minneapolis. Somehow, there must be a way to look at the relics of late modernism that populate the inner portion of the city, with the awe-wonder-appreciate that I am bestowing on Haussmann’s Paris…

There is no plateau of resting or stabilizing. Once you are interested in how things evolve, you have a kind of never-ending perspective, because it means you are interested in articulating the evolution, and therefore the potential change, the potential redefinition. —Rem Koolhaas

The Touch of Satan

Life is good and I’m enjoying myself. What can I say? I’m completely spellbound by the new wall shelves that my friend Christopher Pole is going to build for me and I’m also salivating at the thought of getting out of MPLS for a while.

On a recent trip to Barnes & Noble, Curtis and I came across the Mystery Science Theater 3000 box sets. Wow. Talk about taking me back to my youth. For a second, I had bad acne and felt like I was back in my family’s basement watching the Sci-Fi Channel. Anyway. As we were watching The Touch of Satan, it occurred to me that there has to be greater critical depth to this program.

In a past post, I remarked that I thought the FOX animated television show Family Guy might be an apex of late Postmodernism. After watching MST3K again, I believe that it represents yet another facet of Postmodernism coming to fruition. Where Family Guy represents the splintering, mish-mashing, and appropriation of aspects of contemporary culture to create a new whole, one could argue that MST3K indicates another core part of postmodernism in visual culture: questions of authorship.

I couldn’t help but notice that the commentary introduced by Mike, Tom Servo, and Crow acts both as a humorous (exceptionally, even) device, and also, as a means of redrawing the narrative of the film as it unfolds. It is fascinating to watch the linear format of a bad film be verbally cut up, digested, and wittily put back together into something better.

Babbling.

David Benmussa

I came across this work on the blog Type Neu… some exceptionally well handled design. Link to portfolio.

…to admire the view.

end of public domain

I decided to spend this Easter Sunday hunting around and photographing the abandoned structures that make up Ft. Snelling Park. Located 15 minutes south of MPLS, along the stretch of highways 55 and 62 that lead to the airport, I’ve always been curious about this place. As luck would have it, today Curtis, Lindsay, Amber and I finally had a chance to troll around.

I was a little worried as we wandered about. The area is a mish-mash of public parkland space, and its inverse square: highly restricted airport and military base.  In the back of my mind I kept remembering the story of  my friend David, who was approached by heavily armed military security for setting up a 4X5 camera and photographing the undersides of over-flying planes here.

razorwire and boulder

As I walked to the end of the park and approached the ominous looking airport fence, I was preparing myself for someone to point a gun at me and ask for my CF card. Such seems to be the attitude toward anyone who takes photographs in the public/private hinterlands of post-W America. I keep spinning around one question: What if the powers that be are actually able to stop everyone from photographing things which are not their friends and family?

I have a hard time imagining a world where everyone has been stripped of the (psychologically) externalizing practice of documenting something, someplace. What would the world be like if we were never able to expect a type of documentary truth in our lives that has to come from something like photography? I’m left thinking of Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451… a world where the physical record of an idea in book form is illegal… everyone is caught up in their own perceptions as truth.

debris

A few more photos are posted at my FLICKR page.

Here is a rant for a fine Thursday morning. I hopped on the bus this morning, just like every morning, and plopped down next to someone. They almost immediately drew out their cell phone and started describing, in detail their intense love of Kurt Russel. Not just along the lines of Kurt Russel is a great actor in that one movie… but… to the degree of describing her dripping wet parts as she watched “Big Trouble in Little China”.

I don’t think I needed that.

This is yet another reason that cities with metro systems are infinitely better than those that with crappy buses. I would give anything to not have to put up with Chatty Cathy Cellphone Time every morning.

I’ve been reading through Alain de Botton’s Status Anxiety. It is truly a great book that accurately describes the pressures of being an individual alive in our current historical period.  It’s true: we are infinitely wealthier than those who lived before us… but the accumulation of wealth and comfort in no way has translated into greater happiness.
Check out this video segment from Botton’s broadcast on his book.

…tired of photographers and discussions of photography. I think it is finally time to go back to making actual, physical, hand-made prints for a change.